


Nightmare

by allyarra



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:52:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyarra/pseuds/allyarra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh has always had nightmares and it seems as if they all involve drifting</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from but it was fun

When they first enter the academy Raleigh has nightmares about drifting. He wakes up in the early hours of the morning, the time of night that’s the worst for those plagued by nightmares, covered in a cold sweat and carefully controlled breathing, the way they’d taught in class. Raleigh does a check to make sure that his mind is his own, that there is no one else there, before he makes sure that all of him is there. He has nightmares of drifting, of being lost in the drift and never making it out.

He’s checked the records, he knows that it’s happened in the past. The professors all treat it as a warning tale, to keep them from chasing rabbits. They talk about it like parents talk about the monsters under their children’s beds, as if the possibility isn’t real, but that they’re humoring the child anyway.  The others all laugh it off, but Raleigh, Raleigh has nightmares. He knows about the people who got caught in memories, lost in the drift, and never made it out. He’s even seen their mindless bodies. Yancy pretends not to know, but Raleigh knows he does. Raleigh’s afraid, not stupid. It doesn’t stop him from drifting with Yancy, or, at least, it shouldn’t.

Then comes the test day. The day they’ve been waiting for, to test the brothers’ drift compatibility.

The day of their first neural handshake dawns bright and clear and bitterly cold, a reminder of where they come from. Yancy laughs but Raleigh is grateful for the cold, he can pretend his trembling hands are just shivering. No one calls him out on the fact that he never shivered in this kind of weather before, not even Yancy.

They wait for a long time, as the other pairs are called in and perform the neural handshake and each time they come out, sane and whole and separate, Raleigh feels his anxiety growing. It’s like some giant hand is squeezing his heart and he hates it, but he doesn’t move. He sits and he waits even as Yancy gets up and paces that hallway. Raleigh knows his brother, knows that his brother is afraid they won’t be compatible. Too bad Yancy doesn’t realize that Raleigh’s fear is the exact opposite, that they’re too compatible, that he’ll never get Yancy out of his head again.

Finally it’s their turn and Raleigh swallows back his fear. His pride won’t let him back out now so there’s nothing to do but go forward and so he walks forward with Yancy at his side. That night he has a nightmare that Yancy is gone, his brother, the person that he knows inside and out, and it shakes him to the core. He’s not afraid of drifting anymore, he knows now that he won’t lose himself in it, no, his fear is much more than that now. He knows that Yancy is dreaming in the bunk above his, sleeping peacefully because he is able to accept things at face value, something that Raleigh is only now beginning to understand.

It’s a nightmare that haunts him through the years that they drift together, something that Yancy never says anything about. He doesn’t need to. Raleigh already knows exactly what Yancy would say. Then comes that awful night, when he feels Yancy die and he’s still connected with his brother.

He’s picked up and brought to base and they try to make him see a shrink but it doesn’t help. They can’t understand that Yancy isn’t really gone, that Raleigh still has two people in his head. When Raleigh finally leaves he does it because he knows he can’t let anyone else into his head at this point. He knows that his old nightmare, of getting lost in the drift, has come true in a horrible way, merged with his nightmares that came after the first drift. Because he never came out of that last drift, not really, and he’s lost his brother. It’s left him in a place where he can’t be at the base anymore, can’t be in the places where he lived with his brother.

He goes to the wall and he drowns himself in the work for years. He watches the reports and at the back of his mind listens to what Yancy would think about them, but he doesn’t move to try and do something. Not again. He’s lost too much to the Jaeger program to go back there without prodding and he knows that prodding will have to come from one person, the only person besides his brother who could ever fully control him. It’s a good thing Yancy’s in his head though, because Raleigh’s not as wild as he used to be with his big brother always looking over his shoulder, always keeping him in control. It helps for a long time and then helps to keep him from going too crazy when it no longer takes the edge off Raleigh’s crazy.

Then the Marshall comes for him and Raleigh knows that it’s time to go back, time to try once more. Yancy agrees with the Marshall, but then neither of them realize that it’s more than just Raleigh in his brain. Yancy’s more than just a ghost to Raleigh and he’ll be more than just a ghost to Raleigh’s co-pilot, but Raleigh can’t stop himself anymore and Yancy isn’t even trying. So Raleigh goes back to Gipsy Danger and he fights with Mako Mori and he looks her in the face and recognizes that this is the person who can handle having three people in her head.

He’s forgotten how it feels to have someone alive sharing their mind with you and he’s grateful that she just accepts the third person in their drift. That night he has a nightmare about silence, about being alone in his head for the rest of his life. He looks Mako in the eyes the next day and knows that she’s had the same nightmare. He smiles at her and follows her the rest of the way down the rabbit hole, knowing that even if he could get out, he doesn’t want to.


End file.
